h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Life support system failing.
Ship on auto we should be ok for a month.
Our search for a fair and just civilsation must go on and hopefully we shall find help and guidance before our resources are exhausted.
The older crew members are finding it difficult to cope and the younger crew members are fully engaged learning what other people have already done, others are following there choosing to enjoy life to the full in the hope that their experience will stand them in good stead when we find what it is we are looking for, and a lot of the crew are doing their best to serve them.
Some crew members have already given up and have become a drain on our resources.
We shall continue to do what we can for those truly in need of help
Over and out.

I think you are confusing life-support with the will to live.

My wireless has started to play old repeats of donkeys braying.

No confusion - Life support and the will to live need to go hand in hand.
Donkeys bray as a way of communication. Do you give them a carrot or a stick ?

In the particular case of these donkeys, as much stick as possible, because they've already stolen all the carrots.

It isn't Houston that has the a problem.

>>Some crew members have already given up and have become a drain on our resources.

Feed 'em to the Space Whale!

And just in time for the 40th anniversary of the original event too.

I am so confused. what happened to the talk rooms? I have been on this damn computer for 3 hours and I still cannot talk with anyone. Also, why so complicated?? Maybe you are so into security that you*ve must the point. Is this really why we need computers? melo thanx for the headaches.

I'll try and decode it all for you. Obviously "Houston we have a problem" is a quote from a film staring Tom Hanks, so we must be talking about The Da Vinci Code. Well, you got us there. Yes, we were planning the theft of the Mona Lisa.

It only seem fair you see, becuase some chap that Sinbad met on an island where, as it happens, he was king, stole our pensions and gave half away to pay of a protection racket and lost the other half down the back of some chav's sofa. (Which is loosely what the second half of the message alluded to).

But now we will have to come up with a new plan.

My previous comment, by the way, was just a curious bit of synchronicity, and nothing to do with the plot at all.

You guys are completely lost.
This thread is a new conversation.
It has a fictional connotation in that the whole world can be considered as a space ship, with finite resources, travelling through space. It's crew, the human race, are in need of help.
Houston could be god or any other form that could be in control of human existence.

I got the wrong space ship, but at least mine was shown on the telly on Saturday night.

Ancient Brit @10 : >>You guys are completely lost<<
That's pretty much what you said in your OP?

Trouble is, we in steerage are all tied up with our own problems and very few of us can interpret the information on the message boards around the ship - all of which have different bulletins, many radically different.

The few thinking ones among us are aware that there is salvation not too far away but the factions among the senior crew can't seem to agree on a course to help us avoid intervening obstacles, while the in-fighting among the junior crew is, well, at the least unhelpful.

Houston appears to those few of us to deaf, blind and uncaring whereas most have a blind, unreasoning faith in a rescue mission.

In fact (as those few know only too well), Houston is rather enjoying our situation, watching intermittently and interfering in only very subtle (but unhelpful) ways.

The earth as spaceship metaphor was originally conceived by American Buckminster Fuller.

Wiki or a google search will provide many 3rd party observations and opinions of the idea but here (well beyond a basic introduction) is the official `spaceship earth` website as it appears today:

http://www.bfi.org/our_programs/who_is_buckminster_fuller/design_science/spaceship_earth

I found it amazing and amusing to read the first few posts of this thread and to see the irony of people talking entirely at cross-purposes but about the same, if different, thing. The OP proposal could describe the new and current scifi TV series `Stargate Universe` where virtually all of the conditions described in Post 1 are being played out by a widely diverse demographic of actors on a spaceship lost in space.


-jwf-

I found the OP quite easy to understand:

"Young people are scum. The unemployed are scum."

<>

Quite true, I find myself hideous, and don't get me started on my friends!

<>

Please tell me this fair and just civilisation doesn't include your idea of murdering criminals.

>>...idea of murdering criminals. <<

If you are referring to capital punishment I believe there are valid arguments
for it in some cases. I don't think the evo-psych crowd really got a chance to
show the effectiveness of capital punishment as a form of 'natural selection'.

It could also be argued that the quality of life has deteriorated greatly in countries
where they have accepted and embraced the sweeping generalisation that it is
better to feed and house dangerous criminals for the rest of their natural lives
than it is to exterminate them. Better how? For whom?

The argument of diminishing resources might also be used to justify a selective
culling in some societies. The Lifeboat Earth scenario is quite valid. And we all
know what happens to the weak in lifeboats with limited resources.

Natural selection is a b*tch. And it will always trump the best intentions.


~jwf~

Well now, ~ jwf ~ , I'm in broad agreement there, except for the uncomfortable fact that, in some cases, we can be sure only "beyond reasonable doubt", not absolutely sure.
If that is true in some (if only a few) cases then that must, in the name of justice, apply to all.

Further, you say >>... diminishing resources ... justify a selective culling in some societies<<
That, I'm in agreement with though initially on a voluntary basis. We've all heard of several cases where people have asked - begged, even, for release.
Personally I've known of several and have had first-hand experience of two (my parents) who really did, repeatedly, wish for such release.
In my own case, I foresee such a state - not afraid of death itself but very much afraid of what the process of dying may bring, sometimes many years - the long goodbye.

This is becoming - and will become more so - the subject of serious debate and will gradually become accepted.
Somewhere, somewhen in, I believe, my lifetime (all other things being equal!) It will happen and thus spread.

Initially on a voluntary basis... yes, that's not so difficult of course. The other aspect will also come more to the fore and, broadly but not deeply, I'm in agreement there, too, but have two reservations:
1. the ever present danger of The Thin End Of The Wedge and
2. being (mildly) in favour, I'm not sure I'd want to be on any panel charged with making such decisions.

< I'm not sure I'd want to be on any panel charged with making such decisions. >
The problems are throughout the ship. Who has Houston placed in the position to set up a panel and charge it with any responsibility ?

Is this thread some kind of elaborate joke or spoof that I'm just not getting?

As you see it Otto.
Could be real in the sense that the world could be seen as a space ship wandering through space with finite resources. This is not a new notion as jwf points out in post 13.